Journal of Architectural Education

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Topographical Premises

David Leatherbarrow

To cite this article: David Leatherbarrow (2004) Topographical Premises, Journal of

Architectural Education, 57:3, 70-73, DOI: 10.1162/104648804772745283
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DAVID LEATHERBARROW
University of Pennsylvania
Subordinate standing has often been conferred on
landscape architecture because its professional his-
tory is much shorter than architecture’s and its the-
ory correspondingly slighter. Recent writings and
projects, however, show that the dependency sug-
gested by this lineage is false. Concepts and tech-
niques that were once thought to be proper to
landscape design have come to dominate architec-
tural design and debate: phenomena of process or
temporal unfolding, “registration” prompting articu-
lation, “mapping” as a survey technique, and so on.
“Flow,” the central concept of contemporary (archi-
tectural) spatiality, takes extended territory (land-
scape) as its basic premise. The current fascination
with “extra-large” buildings and infrastructure also
indicates the enhanced status of landscape in archi-
tectural thought. The strong effect of these ideas
on the older profession cannot be denied, nor can it
be explained as a result of ecological consciousness,
to which it nevertheless relates. Recent arguments
for urban ecology suggest that thinking about land-
scape will enable architects to reconceive the nature
and task of designing buildings, as if the whole of
which buildings are part is environmental —not
only, nor essentially, architectural.
Does this reranking and rapprochement annul
all the distinctions between architecture and land-
scape, replacing difference with sameness? Because
this alternative is entirely too categorical, I want to
propose a third sense of the rapport between land-
scape and architecture: that the two are best under-
stood when seen as parts of something more basic
and inclusive: topography. But to understand land-
scape and architecture as topographical arts, we
need to rethink old ideas of both nature and
design.
For the term topography to indicate essential
aspects of both architecture and landscape, its con-
ventional meaning must be extended. Six character-
istics are decisive: that its character is horizonal;
that movement within it continually confronts con-
Topographical Premises
trary conditions and mosaic heterogeneity; that it
cannot be equated with land or materials as physical
substances; that it is not form either, when that is
taken to be immaterial volume or proŽle; that its
manner of presenting itself is paradoxical: mani-
festly latent, or given, not shown; and that its tem-
porality allows it to serve as both record of and
invitation to human praxis, a chronicle and condi-
tion of human freedom.
The Horizon of Both
Architecture and Landscape
Single spatial settings are always deŽned with
respect to others, from which they differ and
diverge to greater or lesser degrees. The horizon of
this differentiation and divergence can be called
topography, including both urban and rural loca-
tions. Describing this milieu is difŽcult because
description, like perception, concentrates attention,
whereas topography exists outside the limits of any
topic brought into focus. Marginal here does not
mean less important, only cast into shadow by the
theme of current preoccupations. Topography so
conceived is never in front of but always behind the
things on which attention focuses, not a tableau
targeted by perceptual interests but the noiseless
and remote background from which these interests
emerge. The common meaning of the word horizon,
a line in the far distance where sky meets land,
helps less in explaining such a milieu than another
understanding of the same word: the outwardly
extending level on which everyday affairs play
themselves out. 1 Both landscape and urban terrain
articulate this more basic level, but neither encom-
passes it or is adequate to its potential.
Mosaic Heterogeneity
There is always more to topography so described
than what might be viewed at any given moment.
Excess is implied in what has been observed about
its ambience, for what constitutes the margins of
Journal of Architectural Education,
pp. 70–73 Q 2004 David Leatherbarrow
perceptual concentration always exceeds the expec-
tations of that focus. But this still more is not more
of the same. Differences are discovered in the
spread of topography, contrast and complementarity
structure relationships between its situations and
institutions. In modernist theory, space has been
presented as the all-embracing framework of every
particular circumstance, the unlimited container of
all possible contents. Likewise in modern science,
and in the writings on architecture and landscape
that appropriated its axioms, continuous space was
understood to be isotropic and homogenous, pos-
sessing a self-sameness congenial to intellectual
mastery because of the conceptual character of its
attributes. Topography is just the opposite of space:
polytropic, heterogenous, and concrete; its regions
contrast, conict, and sometimes converse with one
another. Yet it is not a Želd of inŽnite difference
either. Topography continually offers experience
both unexpected and familiar situations. If space
advances its array all at once (in simultaneity),
topography gives its locations in time. In any given
site, at any given moment, its structure requires that
some places be recalled, others anticipated. For this
reason topography also measures human Žnitude.
Neither Land Nor Materials
as Such
Common usage physicalizes topography as land or
terrain. For this reason, it will not be controversial
to suggest that landscape architecture must concern
itself with topography, for it is an art of reshaping
and qualifying the earth’s surface. Architecture also
involves building with and against the land. Land
and materials are required for construction to (liter-
ally) “take place.” In both landscape and architec-
ture, then, it would seem inevitable that physical
things, materials of one kind or another, are neces-
sary topics of design. Is topography therefore physi-
cal? Yes and no. Yes because it must be palpable to
be perceptible, and no because what is perceived
Topographical Premises 70
conceals the latent qualities that make it what it is
or will become. The word capacity applied to physi-
cal things indicates this unseen possibility, as does
the word potential. Capacities cannot be (fully) dis-
cerned because they keep themselves recessive, like
the backside of an object one is looking at or the
inside of something shaped or polished. Every sur-
face is a surface of something, and that something
is what matters in topography. Construction Žnish-
ing, to which I will return, aims to cultivate the
potential of things. Topography, then, is not what
physically appears in a given place—built or
unbuilt —at least not only that.
Not the Play of Forms in Light
Nor should topography be characterized as the form
of landscape or architecture. Form is an exceedingly
complex symbolism in landscape and architectural
discourse, as difŽcult as modern concepts of space,
to which it refers. Typical of most current concep-
tions of form is dedication to volume and proŽle.
Missing from most is attention to the material
aspects of things, such as Le Corbusier’s account of
architecture as the play of volumes or forms in light.
Likewise is his assertion that à la modénature, on
reconnaˆt le plasticien. Nothing in these passages
indicates the importance of physical things —their
depths, their temporalities, their concreteness;
stressed instead is shape. Form so understood is far
from clear, however, because, when the lines and
angles of a design are built, they are subsumed by
concrete qualities, as Le Corbusier himself demon-
strated in his later awareness of architecture’s bru-
tality. Topography is neither land nor form.
Given Not Shown
Topography gives itself to experience in a paradoxi-
cal way: manifestly latent. The recessive character of
a material’s potential indicates this latency. My criti-
cism of the form hypothesis, however, suggests that
the capacities that exist in land or materials are not
71 leatherbarrow
unapparent. The difŽculty is to recover an under-
standing of a topographical situation in which
recessive conditions not only possess but also offer
a fullness that resists complete comprehension, a
situation in which what is latent is evidently poten-
tial. Sites are surveyed in the early stages of design
so that given conditions can be described and
understood. Although this seems obvious, the term
given conditions is far from clear. We tend to
assume that the place exhibits “its intentions” the
way designs present theirs; in both, intentions are
shown, and givenness we believe offers expressive
display.2 But this again confuses the standing of a
Žgure with that of its ground, for topography is not
composed of objects in the same sense. It does not
expose the grounds (intentionality) of its formation,
but serves as the grounds for that formation. Per-
haps two intentionalities can be distinguished, one
that is passive for undesigned, another that is asser-
tive for designed conditions. When a landscape or
building shows itself, topography is not annulled,
only sublimated, for it continues to exist (to give
itself) at the margins of or beneath all that invites
attention.
Saturated with Traces of Praxis
Perhaps this will be clearer if I outline topography’s
historical or temporal dimensions. Once taken up in
the adventure of construction and use, the materials
of a landscape or building invite, register, and Žnally
recall kinds of conduct that increasingly saturate
their surfaces with traces of typical modes of
behavior. This makes each surface something of a
clock, calendar, and chronicle, but the vectors of
topographical time do not only point toward the
past; each trace also prompts or invites subsequent
events. The time that is particular to topography
allows its heritage to be renewed through acts of
appropriation that obey no obligation to the past
other than its use for purposes of redeŽnition. Past,
present, and future do not line up one after the
other in topographical time, but bend that line back
onto and out from itself such that both directions
overlap in the present. Time such as this is rather
slow, just as topographical articulation is rather
silent and its presence rather remote. It may seem
sensible to distinguish two agencies at work in the
process of sedimentation whereby topography
accrues and extends history (human and environ-
mental forces), but only their compounded effects
give it its proper voice. This articulation, not exactly
writing, is what the “graphic” part of topography
signiŽes. As a form of inscription, it is not a writing
on the walls, not even a writing of the walls, for
topography is less legible than that. To grasp its
kind of sense we must envisage a lateral, indirect, or
tacit sort of communication that is no less signiŽ-
cant for its quiet repose, just differently so.
The preceding six-part characterization of
topography may suggest that it is more or less the
same thing as nature. This identiŽcation should be
resisted. Insofar as its structures are appropriated
into conduct, it can certainly be called “natural,”
but this does not make it nature in the conventional
meanings of that word. Viewing topography as
nature is wrong on two counts: it is not a physical
entity, or group of them, and its manifestations are
not separable from those we call human or artiŽcial.
Yet, some interpretations of nature do clarify topog-
raphy as I understand it. In his Philosophical Inquir-
ies into the Nature of Human Freedom, Friedrich
Schelling wrote, “the world as we now behold it, is
all rule, order and form; but the unruly {das Regel-
lose} lies ever in the depth as though it might again
break through . . . order and form nowhere appear
to be original.”3 Modern philosophers have strug-
gled to understand the regellose of this passage.
Unruly is a fairly literal translation, alternatives
might be normless or inchoate. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, in his lectures on nature (1956–1960), char-
acterized Schelling’s “barbaric principle” as “wild,”
“savage,” or “brute” being (être brut).4 This was just
six years before Reyner Banham elaborated on the
term brutalist in his account of the surfaces of Le
Corbusier’s Maisons Jaoul. 5 Is topography similarly
inchoate, unruly, or “brutal?”
The qualities of topography I have stressed
include its horizonal character, its mosaic heteroge-
neity or contrariness, its recessiveness, nonformality,
and its full temporality. Each of these suggests that
topography escapes the limits of discrete projects
both spatially and temporally, or reveals the
enmeshed character of those limits. Is topography
then an original condition that grounds the adven-
tures of design? John Dixon Hunt, in his recent
book on the theory of landscape architecture,
argued that both second nature (cultivated land-
scape) and third nature (gardens), take for granted
a Žrst nature, which serves as their foundation but
lacks their legible articulations. 6 Edmund Husserl’s
concept of the earth as erste Natur intends a simi-
larly unelaborated substrate. The numerical
sequence of the three natures does not mean that
the primordial grounds are superceded by the
“higher” articulations, only that the Žrst is the cra-
dle of those that follow. Nor do these elaborations
annul this umbilical relationship. Topography persists
as a remnant in Žnished works, a remainder that
resists complete (perfect) cultivation, Žnishing or
articulation, a neglected capacity that “might break
through” just because it is regellos. Figuration uses
but does not sever the ties between the object and
this substrate, for topography has (is) the power to
continually reform what has been formed, unsettling
previously settled arrangements. Construction Žn-
ishing in both landscape and architecture takes
advantage of this potential in its care for the inner
capacities of things. Further, reŽnishing, through
technique (maintenance) or environmental inuence
(weathering), also draws upon this latency, just as it
must respond to its unforeseen effects. What seems
passive, a “resource” or unstinting donation, is also
active, an “inuence” that occasionally has disas-
trous effects. All modiŽcations are sustained by the
unruly remnant. Typical uses, with all their expecta-
tions of appearance, temperature, and resistance,
also depend on this (regellos) potential. Yet, if the
inchoate depth of things continually resists all of
these efforts and effects, it also suffers and absorbs
them. And it is precisely this absorption that gives
saturated phenomena their excess of meanings. Set-
tings are able to prompt conduct because the
topography of which they are part has been satu-
rated with traces of typical events.
Accordingly, neither architecture nor landscape
architecture conceived as topographical arts involve
“working with nature.” Topography cannot be
worked and is not an object of making. Nor can it
be designed, shaped, fabricated, or produced.
Instead, it sets forth the conditions under which a
project’s intentions can be realized, or is the ensem-
ble of conditions against which the intelligence of a
project is measured. In the midst of this Želd of
forces or conŽguration of capacities, the task of
design is to combine the intentionality of the proj-
ect with a willingness to let “things” appear that
have neither been seen nor expected. When trying
to imagine such as appearance, perhaps a better
example than owers in the countryside is a public
event on a street, one that was unanticipated.
If topography is something that landscape
architects and architects should endeavor to under-
stand not to produce, two remaining questions
require attention: what bearing does such under-
standing have on these practices, and how does
that understanding help with the distinction
between design work in each Želd?
Louis I. Kahn was not the Žrst architect to
make assertions about what “order is.” Among his
contemporaries he was, however, unusual in resist-
ing the tendency to make order—the order of the
room, the building, the city, or the world —the out-
come of design. Nowadays, few hesitate as he did.
But the idea of “culture as project” is not new.
Long before the twentieth century, architects con-
vinced themselves that the orders could become
instruments of ordering, could be both ends and
means. Heirs to this tradition, we have great trouble
seeing design as something other than technique or
planning, great difŽculty seeing it as a mode of par-
ticipation in an existing structure. Our methods are
so effective, and our desire for a well-administered
world so strong, that ordering has become the
architect’s chief service. If topography has a role to
play in contemporary design practice, its job is to
give “ordering” techniques their orientation, to sup-
ply them with a frame of reference, a milieu, and a
calendar. Were design practices to accept such a
donation (the givenness described previously), our
methods would not seek only the pleasure of their
own productivity but attempt to disclose the condi-
tions of their genesis, out of topography and its
structures.
Seen as agencies of disclosure (not only of
productivity), landscape architecture and architec-
ture build upon topography in different ways. As
the Žrst premise, topography sustains the emer-
gence of subsequent levels of greater articulation
that include not only landscapes and buildings but
the situations they accommodate and represent.
Higher articulations include picturing, speaking, and
writing. This suggests a spectrum of articulation,
with “higher” types more differentiated from the
conditions of their emergence. One consequence of
greater differentiation is an increased latency of
potentials. If architecture offers more “permanent”
images than landscape, it also keeps its potentiali-
ties more remote: the pace of change is quicker in
landscape, its image is less steady. Architectural sur-
faces accrue greater saturation than those of gar-
dens, but the latter show greater spontaneity in the
presentation of unforeseen qualities. An important
consequence of different degrees of differentiation
concerns the matter of latency, for the disclosure of
capacities in a landscape and building depends on
Topographical Premises 72
internal and external agencies to lesser or greater
degrees: landscapes renew themselves to a consid-
erable degree, buildings require repair. As above,
however, differences here are in degree not kind. In
both gardens and buildings, renewal and disclosure
are prompted by the same source. Topography gives
to landscapes and buildings a kind of sense that
differs from that conferred upon them through the
intentions, controls, and expectations of design and
construction, a kind of sense like that of an event:
engaging, intrinsic, and more often than not startling.
73 leatherbarrow
Notes (Paris: Seuil, 1995), p. 62; and Le Visible et l’Invisible (Paris: Gallimard,
1. I develop this argument in Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technol- 1964), pp. 307, 321.
ogy and Topography (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000). My forthcom- 5. Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (New York:
ing book on landscape architecture and architecture, to be published by Reinhold, 1966), pp. 85–86.
the University of Pennsylvania Press in spring of 2004, treats this topic 6. John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: the Practice of Garden Theory
also, as it does the whole issue of topography. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 32 –75.
2. Without alluding to landscapes or buildings, Jean Luc Marion clariŽes
the distinction between the ways phenomena sometimes “give” and
other times “show” themselves in Being Given (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2002). I have also beneŽted from his discussion of “satu-
rated phenomena.”
3. F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human
Freedom (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1936), p. 34.
4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Nature: Notes Cours du Collège de France